


In The Dark

by a_noni_mouse (Blargnaught)



Series: Porn for Porn's Sake [6]
Category: Martin Mystère | Martin Mystery
Genre: (sort of), But with a little bit of plot?, Cunnilingus, F/M, First Time, I may still write the rest of it, I've always been fond of the idea, It's kind of wierd on its own but its still porn, Loss of Virginity, M/F, Monster sex, More details in the authors notes, Not the weirdest thing I've written though, PWP, Porn, This was originally part one of something longer, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Virgin Martin, at least, kind of Cthulhulian, non-con, non-con is very light but I thought I'd warn anyway, so whatever, that's what I was going for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 14:16:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11876274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blargnaught/pseuds/a_noni_mouse
Summary: Martin Diana and Billy are investigating a long lost temple in some undisclosed part of the Amazon. When Martin is separated from the other two, he has a surreal (and sexy) encounter with the creature lurking in the dark, just outside of his torchlight....**Invisible points of pressure slid down his chest, across his belly and over his hips, like fingers but less tangible.  Where the darkness was filling him with ice, the points of contact left a trail of fire across his skin. The touch trailed to his inner thigh. Palms settled on his hips in a weird facsimile of an embrace, sapping the last of his strength and rooting him to the spot. Part of him wanted to run, fight, scream, anything. Part of him waited for the feeling of claws, fangs, strangulation, broken bones, however this creature in the dark was planning on devouring him. The weight in his brain shifted.You don’t want to run, really,it seemed to say, and he protested because he really, really did.**





	In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> As I said in the tags, the non-con element in this is very light -- Martin is a very willing participant, even if the situation is more than a little rape-y. Still, I don't want to make someone uncomfortable, so consider yourselves warned. 
> 
> I've been working on this fic off and on for years, and I'm a little surprised that I managed to finally finish it. It was originally supposed to be part one of a pornographic Martin Mystery series in which Martin has s ton of sex with various different people and things...mostly as a way for me to scratch that itch I get for really weird and kinky porn. And, honestly, I just love how unapologetically campy the cartoon was. I'd love an excuse to write me some campy as hell porn. So there will probably be more of this, you know, for me and the two or so other people that this is relevant to :P
> 
> Enjoy, you weirdos!

"All I'm saying is that you need to live a little. It's our senior year for Christ sakes, and I don't think I've seen you leave your room once, except for class. And that doesn't even count! The least you could do is go to the end of the year party."

Martin panned his flashlight from side to side as he walked, illuminating the intricate carvings on the tunnel walls. They had been cool, at first -- the way the pictographs slid seamlessly from one to the next was interesting in a girly-lace-doily kind of way, but they would be cooler if he could read them. He had sent a sample to M.O.M for translation of course, but she hadn't gotten back to him on it yet. Disappointing.

It was another day, another case; The Center had shipped them off to some undisclosed point in the Amazon to track down a couple of missing archeologists. Supposedly, the pair had ventured into the jungle to investigate a pre-conquest temple that some conservationist had unwittingly uncovered while tracking some rare species of bird with a ten-syllable name that Martin couldn't pronounce. They -- the archeologists, not the conservationist -- wandered away from their party and hadn't been seen or heard from since. 

Martin wasn’t complaining: it was two weeks before final exams and Torrington had practically gone into lockdown -- no parties, no club activities, no trips to town, no fun. The atmosphere was suffocating, and he could feel it slowly choking the bright spark out of his poor, adventure-deprived soul. When the emergency call from The Center had come in, he had practically leapt at the chance to escape Study Hall Hell. 

His sister, on the other hand, had been (expectedly) less than thrilled and her poor attitude was totally killing his groove.

"Our senior grades are the most important set of marks we get, Martin. They go a long way in determining what colleges you are and aren't accepted to. Not that I would expect you to care." The disapproval in her tone was almost as heavy as the darkness pressing in on them, but Martin had years of experience at ignoring both creepy dark places and his sister’s biting sarcasm --it was the same old spiel anyhow; 'Martin your grades this,' or 'Martin your grades that.' And, well, the darkness hadn't tried to eat them yet, so this adventure was already going better than at least a dozen others that he could think of off the top of his head. Plus one for the home team.

"That doesn't mean you have to work yourself to death over them, you know. You'll end up breaking from stress before you even get to the finals."

He was being quite logical, he thought, and he didn't understand why Diana, with her obsession over 'facts' and 'proof' and 'linear thinking' couldn't see that. But it was whatever, and he had long resigned himself to the fact that girls were a mystery wrapped in a paradox and shrouded in perfume. He wasn't going to bust his brain trying to solve the world’s most unsolvable riddle. Better men before him had tried and failed.

He let Diana's griping fade into a familiar background hum as he leaned in closer to a space of wall. He wasn't what anyone would call a connoisseur of the arts or anything, but he knew his ancient pictographs -- had an entire bookshelf devoted to them back at his dorm -- and these were unlike anything he had come across. Without thinking, he reached out and traced a finger carefully over a delicate swirl that flowed into something that looked like a thorny vine, admiring the crispness of the carving despite the hundreds of years it had spent down the dank tunnel. He wondered what kind of tool had been used to get such perfect, smoothly cut lines. They really were beautiful (though he would be hard pressed to admit that aloud), and the slick stone was warm and pleasant underneath his fingers....

"Martin, maybe you shouldn't touch that." Billy had been silent up until that point, more or less content to hover in the background and let the siblings bicker as they pleased, but now he leaned over Martin's shoulder, frowning, one hand partially extended as if to physically pull him back if he needed too. Martin blinked, startled. Damn Billy's freakishly quiet chair thing, he hadn't heard him get that close.

"Aww, com'mon Billy, it's just a piece of rock with pretty pictures on it." He straightened up anyway and took a couple of steps back to appease his friend. Billy shrugged, smiling sheepishly, but Diana immediately swung her flashlight around, beaming him directly in the eyes. Martin flung his hands up, eyes watering, and annoyance level reaching critical mass.

"Jesus, Dia! Don't blind me!" he snapped. She moved the beam, presumably frowning at him as he tried to rub out the dancing spots of color, but (having been temporarily blinded) he couldn't tell for sure. 

"Sorry." She sounded halfway sincere, at least. "But Billy's right- we probably shouldn't touch anything until we know for certain what this place was originally for."

"It's kinda obvious, right?" Martin's runny eyes made the twisted carvings appear face-like in the gloom. Creepy-cool, except now he wouldn't be able to unsee it, and they all looked like they were staring at him. Yikes! "I mean, we're in a hidden temple in the middle of the Central American rain forest....that can only mean one thing, right?...human sacrifice!" His vision finally cleared enough for him to catch Diana's disapproving scowl in the soft backwash of light. He leered at her. "Maybe that's what happened to the missing Archeologists? Go down a wrong tunnel, ghost of some native dude pops out and bam! Out with their hearts! Kahlimah!"

"Don't be an ass." Diana punched him in the shoulder, hard, but her voice wavered just a little. “Are you trying to jinx us? You’re making it sound like you want them to be dead!”

"Hey!" Martin raised one hand between himself and his sister in protest -- and as an admittedly pathetic line of defense against another attack -- rubbing his aching shoulder with the other. That was going to bruise. Son of a bitch. Son of a Diana. Ha. "How cruel! I was just pointing out the possibility, keeping an open mind and all. Just because I say something doesn't mean I want it to be true." 

"You need a brain-mouth filter." Diana sniffed, stalking past him. She made sure to knock his shoulder as she brushed by. He cocked an exasperated eyebrow at Billy, fully expecting the tiny alien to commiserate with his pain (he always did, he was Martin's biggest fan, after all), but Billy just shrugged and trailed (much more politely) after Diana.

"She kinda has a point." He muttered as he brushed by. Traitor.

"Aww, come on!" Martin sighed and ran a hand through his hair, following. Ok, so maybe that joke had been in poor taste, but Diana (and now Billy, apparently, maybe the stuck-upittyness was catching) needed to lighten up. Granted, he should have expected something like this: his sister had been moodier than usual since the term had begun, losing her shit over small things and snarling at Martin about 'adulting' and 'responsibilities' more often than usual. She had been barely tolerable on missions, and her unwillingness to cooperate was starting to take a toll on their performance record. This was, above all else, the main reason why Martin was determined to drag her out of her book-and-cleanliness-filled-hidey-hole-dorm-room and thrust her back out into the real world- starting with the end of the year bash.

Still, no one knew better than Martin that when Diana got pissy arguing with her was like bashing his head against a brick wall -- which, thanks to some particularly physical cases, he had done enough times both literally and involuntarily that he wasn't willing to do so metaphorically and of his own free will. As of late, all they seemed to do was fight, anyway. Usually it was fun picking at her, because as much as she yelled and scolded, he knew that she knew that it was all for a good time, a joke, nothing serious. Recently, it had just been a headache. It was as if a fun monster had come along and sucked all of the fun juices right out of...actually, no, 'juices' and 'Diana' were not words that belonged in the same sentence together. That was a mental image he neither needed nor wanted. Stopping that thought train right there and purging it with brain bleach.

He dragged his feet, examining the wall decor and watching his reflection in the smooth stone floor. He was content to let the other two get ahead of him for the moment. And for a time it was better than listening to Dai bitch. As he continued on, however, the silence began to take on a heaviness that was worse than dealing with his sister; When they had originally entered the complex, the lack of sound had set Martin's teeth on edge the most: usually, when they trekked down dark and creepy tunnels, there were various tunnel-type noises around them, but in this particular tunnel they were conspicuously absent -- not even the drip of water or the hum of insects disturbed the utter quiet. The only thing that Martin had heard the entire way down -- besides his sister's harpy-voice -- was the soft slap of their footfalls as they walked. 

On the up side, he thought no bats and no biting insects. On the down side, no archeologists and no long dead Indians.

Gradually he turned his attention back to the wall carvings. No one could ever accuse him of being a scholar, sure, but there was something about dead languages and writing that fascinated him, and it was driving him crazy that these did not even remotely resemble anything that he had come across before, not even in passing. Once again, he reached out to trace his finger over a particularly intricate design, not expecting the sudden, sharp sting as the stone bit into his skin. He yelped, thrusting the bleeding digits into his mouth.

"Owwww..." He moaned around them. “What the hell?” He stepped closer, shining his light directly on the wall. Up close, he could see that the outermost edges of the slender carvings were sharp; the glossy black stone had been honed into a razor thin edge. A smear of his blood still shimmered along it in the weak light. "S'weird." He removed his stinging fingers from his mouth, absently licking away the fresh beads of blood and wiping them off on his pants. He followed the carvings with the beam of his flashlight. Like the rest, they were beautifully preserved, a flowing lace-like pattern that had probably meant something to someone a very long time ago, but remained meaningless now to his untrained eyes. 

"Hey, Dian....a." Martin twisted his head this way and that, but there was no sign of either his sister or Billy up ahead; their flashlight beam had completely vanished. But he hadn't let them get _that_ far ahead of him, had he? He should still be able to see the glow of the flashlight...unless they had gone around a corner or fallen into a pit or something.

He jogged further down the tunnel, calling his sister's name and shining his light so that it reflected weakly off of the walls, floor and ceiling around him, but the straight path never diverged, never dropped down, never opened up anyway but forward. Finally, he had to stop to catch his breath. He braced his hands on his kneed a took several deep lungfulls of the warm, humid air. He was trying not to panic. Being in dark creepy places was one thing; Being _alone_ in dark, creepy places was an entirely different animal. Without the light of the other flashlights, Martin's own light barely cut the darkness, creating a small, dimly lit halo around him, and even that seemed to be rapidly dimming in face of the cloying wall of black pressing in at it from all sides. Without his sister and Billy with him to cut the feeling of total isolation, the tunnel suddenly seemed infinitely creepier.

"Billy? Diana?" No answer. His words didn’t even echo, as if they stopped at the edge of his pool of light and melted away. Nerves twisted his stomach and his skin crawled with the weight of imaginary eyes. 

And then, with a pop as loud as a gunshot in the utter silence of the hall, Martin's flashlight went out and the darkness engulfed him fully.

He may or may not have screamed like a little girl, but even his startled cry was swallowed and he was left with just the sound of his own harsh breathing. "Diana?" He tried again. His voice cracked a bit. "Billy?" Still no answer. Martin swore under his breath and tried beating his flashlight with the palm of his hand, hoping to force at least a flicker of light out of it. Nothing happened. "Well this is just great." He grumbled. "DIANA!" Nothing. His breath felt heavy in his chest, and in the absolute, impenetrable blackness, he found himself suddenly too afraid to move. “Diana?” His voice was just barely a whisper now.

In the silence and the darkness, something brushed his arm. 

He ran. He knew from experience not to just stand around when something was touching him in the dark. He needed to find his sister and her flashlight. He needed Billy. He needed backup of SOME kind. Java would have been great. 

But almost immediately, his chest started to burn. Moving through the dark was like moving through quicksand; His legs ached as if he had run a marathon in a matter of seconds and the humidity made it feel like he was trying to breathe under water. That was not right, he thought, as his knees threatened to buckle with every step he took. The darkness wrapped around him like a blanket, tangling around his ankles, pressing into his nose and mouth and eyes, oozing down his throat like tasteless syrup. It was cold. First, his fingertips and toes, then his arms and legs went numb until he could no longer tell if he was moving. It leeched its way to his belly and lungs and heart. It whispered across his skin like a living thing, leaving tingles and numbness in its wake. He couldn’t breathe. He was drowning. His thoughts circled each other in a panic. The more he tried to run away the more it hurt to move.

And then something heavy slid inside his skull and settled. He could feel its weight against his thoughts. It muttered words, and he could feel them sliding like silk over his brain but couldn’t hear...no, couldn’t comprehend them. They twisted the panic and turned it into something darker, hotter, and urgent. He strained to move but his limbs had no strength left. The thing in his brain laughed at him. 

Invisible points of pressure slid down his chest, across his belly and over his hips, like fingers but less tangible. Where the darkness was filling him with ice, the points of contact left a trail of fire across his skin. The touch trailed to his inner thigh. Palms settled on his hips in a weird facsimile of an embrace, sapping the last of his strength and rooting him to the spot. Part of him wanted to run, fight, scream, anything. Part of him waited for the feeling of claws, fangs, strangulation, broken bones, however this creature in the dark was planning on devouring him. The weight in his brain shifted. _You don’t want to run, really,_ it seemed to say, and he protested because he really, really did.

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” It was something a friend of his had said, the punch line of some joke, but now it echoed around him as if the speaker were right in front of him. Laughter followed, rich and warm, and then static, like a radio station that wasn’t coming in quite right. “M..M...Martin....” Alex’s voice, low and lilting. Inviting. Then more static. “Why are you ffffffffffighting me...?” Jennie’s voice. The weight in his brain shifted, oozing through the cracks and crevices of his mind. He blinked once and the darkness wavered, flattened and shifted like a kaleidoscope of black and grey. He heard a _pop_ somewhere and a flare of pain behind his eyes made him gasp and squeeze his eyes shut. "Your sacrifice has not been in vain, child. I will not harm you." 

Martin didn't believe that. Or, he didn't think that he believed that. The pressure in his head, and the pain, was growing more and more intense and it was getting hard to think about much of anything.

"It will not hurt if you do not fight." It was definitely Jenny's voice talking to him now, but Jenny shouldn't be....shouldn't be.... 

He was standing in the doorway to his dorm room, staring at Jennie who was frowning back, arms crossed beneath her breasts. He wasn't....sure... how he had gotten in his dorm. Everything was fuzzy. Had he been sleeping? He thought that maybe he had: Everything felt heavy and warm and...It felt like he had been having a nightmare.

“I...what?” He slurred. Normally, Jennie would never be caught dead anywhere near his room. 

She tossed her head and eyed him critically; Her expression reminded him of a hungry Gorlax.

“I said, why are you fighting this, Martin? I’m not going to hurt you.” 

Martin opened his mouth and closed it again a few times. His brain felt like mush. No, cotton. Cottony mush. _Had_ he been sleeping? Or had he been...been...reading? One of his magazines? No, that wasn’t right, he....

Long, narrow fingers trailed down his chest and it was as if she were trailing a match over his skin. She was so close he could smell her shampoo and her perfume and the minty toothpaste she used. Her breasts pressed, soft and warm, against his chest as her fingers trailed lower and lower. And...oh.

“This is what you want, right?” Her lips were so close. Her voice was husky in his ear. Her breath ticked the sensitive skin on his jaw. “This....” her fingers hooked into the waistband of his jeans and she pulled him that little bit of the way forward, so that they were flush against each other. “....Her.” They were in the hallway, he thought. Anyone could come by and girls weren’t allowed....Warm fingers curled around his where he clutched at the door for support. “Me. Let me in, Martin. And I will make your wildest, wettest dreams a reality.” 

He was weak when it came to women. He had no trouble admitting that. He was even weaker against Jennie. So when she pushed he gave without a fight, conceding his ground, stepping aside and letting her into his room. She stood for a moment, looking around, arms akimbo, before gracing him with a triumphant, hungry smile. “Nice place, Martin Mystery. I could get used to it.” The door closed behind him of its own volition and faded back into the wall, but Martin paid it no mind as Jennie turned toward the bed and beckoned him over with a crook of one perfectly manicured finger. “In fact, I think that I will. Now...” she said “...I made you a promise, and I always deliver...”

He stumbled forward. She let him settle his hands on her waist and pull her back to him. She let him rub small circles in the strip of exposed flesh between her sweater and her jeans. She let him lean forward and kiss her, her lip-gloss sticky and sweet on his lips and tongue. She let him bare her down onto the mattress and straddle her hips. Then, he hesitated. He'd never gotten this far with a girl before. He knew, in theory, what came next, but....

She took his hand and pushed it underneath her sweater.

"Sweet child" She cooed "don't be shy."

He leaned forward and kissed her again, slipping his tongue into her mouth with the hope that it would distract her from the way his hands were trembling as he pushed her sweater up under her armpits. Her bra was silky underneath his fingertips and the swell of her breasts underneath it was pillowy and warm. 

God he was hard. 

His dick, trapped against his thigh, strained against the confines of his jeans. He had never been this aroused before, he was sure of it, and he had spent most of his time since hitting puberty aroused, so that was saying something. She squirmed beneath him just enough to hook her legs around his waist, welcoming him into the hollow of her body and he pushed forward eagerly, rubbing himself against her as his fingers slid into her bra and circled her nipple, feeling the texture of her aureola as it pebbled beneath his uncertain touch.

"There you go." She purred against his lips. Her hand slipped between them to rub firmly over the tent in his jeans, sending sparks of pleasure dancing down his spine. He took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and rolled it gently, pinching a little harder when she moaned and arched beneath him. Encouraged, he leaned down to take the delicate nub between his teeth and sucked it. With his free hand he fumbled his belt loose and then reached for the clasp on her shorts.

She placed a firm hand on his chest and pushed. "Move back for a moment." She said. He resisted, and she pushed at him a little harder. With one last flick of his tongue, he leaned back. She reached behind herself and undid the clasp of her bra, then shrugged both it and her sweater over her head. Taking this as a queue, he tugged his own shirt off and tossed it in the general direction of his dirty laundry pile, then leaned forward and pushed his face into the soft mounds of her breasts.

It was a dream come true, he thought dazedly, using both hands to cup and squeeze her tits, nibbling and nuzzling any flesh that he could find. Her fingers sank into his hair, stroking his scalp for a moment before she began to press his head downward.

"You have a clever tongue, Martin Mystery." She said "Now let’s see what kind of use we can put it to elsewhere."

She guided his face between her legs and, ok, he'd watched enough pornos that he knew what she wanted him to do. He pushed her legs a little further apart and licked experimentally at the denim covering her crotch. It didn't taste like much, but he wasn't expecting it too, and her hips shifted a bit under his touch. He turned his head until he could kiss the bare inside of her thigh, first the left and then the right.

"Tease." She accused, voice warm and amused. Her fingers tightened a bit in his hair. "There will be time for that later, I think."

It was a 'get on with it' if he had ever heard one. He wasted no further time, divesting her of her tiny daisy duke shorts and her even tinier slip of an undergarment, but then he had to set back on his heels and catch his breath as he studied the naked form beneath him. She was...God, she was perfect. She was just like he had imagined her to be, in every single on if his fantasies, from her pert breasts and tiny nipples down to the well manicured patch of curls edging over her pubic bone to her glistening pussy.

Hesitantly, he slid a finger over the bump of her clit and down into the warm wetness between her folds, gently probing until he found the entrance to her vaginal channel. She was so slick already, and his finger slid in easily. He pulled it back out to the first knuckle and pushed it in again, experimentally. She hummed in pleasure and spread her legs a little wider, giving him a better angle to watch as he pushed a second finger in next to the first, just as carefully, just as easily. He crooked them gently, enough to stroke his fingertips across her walls as he continued pumping them in and out of her. 

"Good boy." she praised "But I do not think that that is what I told you to do." He licked his lips, then leaned down and licked a stripe from his fingers to her clit with one broad stroke of the flat of his tongue. 

"There you go." She cooed "but try it like this." She took his free hand and guided his fingers so that he was holding back the folds of her lips and pulling the hood back from her clit. He hesitated a moment, then swirled the tip of his tongue over the sensitive flesh. The moan he received in reward was encouraging, so he did it again, teasing the small organ gently, rolling it gently to and fro and he continued the in and out thrust of his fingers, adding a third when her slick began to drip off of his knuckles and on to the sheets beneath them. He reveled as her moans and sighs turned to praise and curses. Her fingers tightened in his hair and her hips began to twitch against his mouth. 

"So good." She moaned. "Such a fast learner, my little virgin sacrifice. I will be your first and you will be my vassal. My pretty little boy. You will learn so much in the ways of pleasure and I will be with you for every gasp and moan."

With a rough jerk to his hair she dragged him up to her mouth and licked her flavor form his lips. 

"I'll reward you..." She murmured, and twisted her hips. The room spun and the next thing Martin knew he was on his back, blinking up at the ceiling while she worked his jeans and boxers down far enough to free his aching cock. 

"Oh god!" He groaned. He was so hard and so hot that her slim fingers curling around his shaft felt like ice. He throbbed in her grip as she stroked him firmly once, twice, ran her thumb over the tip, smearing the pre-cum that was leaking generously down his glans. 

"Your god." She hummed, then laughed. "Of a type. One long forgotten." She leaned down and licked a long, wet stripe up his dick from balls to tip, then suckled the beads of semen away as they gathered at his slit. "I'm so hungry, Martin. Can you imagine, being revered for my gift of sexuality and fertility for centuries, and then abandoned to rot, alone and starving in this cold, wet prison? In the dark?" She bobbed her head and took the whole of his glans into her mouth and sucked and Jesus, Joseph and Mary, that perfect wet heat, that perfect suction. He felt his balls tighten, felt the tight coil in his groin strain, just at the brink of snapping....  
She pulled away and laughed at his desperate, involuntary wail.

"Shhh, I said that I would reward you. You are going to bring me back into the light, Martin." She said dreamily "You are going to feed me, make me whole again." She scooted forward on her knees until she was kneeling above his dick, one hand holding him steady as she positioned him at her entrance. "I may never be a god again, but I will not be lost forever, and I refuse to be forgotten. And you...you will be irresistible Martin. You will be perfect...." She lowered herself onto him with a low, throaty moan of ecstasy that he echoed. She was...perfect, so hot and tight and wet, enveloping him in ways he had never imagined. It was like sinking into a warm bath, and at the same time as if he had touched a live wire with his dick as bolts of pleasure sang up and down his spine, tingling at his fingertips and his toes. She didn't give either of them a chance to adjust before she was fucking his brains out, riding him hard and fast until he was sure that he was drooling onto the pillow but he didn't care, could only focus on the loud, wailing moans she made and the way her vagina pulsed and squeezed around him. His hips drove mindlessly up into her pussy and they set a rhythm of sorts, disjointed but so, so good. The orgasm that he had been denied earlier came screaming back to him, he felt her grind down desperately, once, twice, and then freeze, twitching and clenching around him so desperately that it was almost painful. He dug his fingers into the flesh of her hips and shoved up as hard as he could, and came. 

*~*

_Martin?_

He groaned. Every bit of him hurt; His head ached, his mouth was dry and sore, his back hurt and his arms and legs and...well. He ached all over, was the point, the kind where one ache sort of melted into another ache, and he couldn’t really tell where they began or ended.

_Martin are you ok? Hey, wake up!_

Something was stinging his face, and as he became more aware, he realized that someone was slapping him gently on the cheek. He batted weakly at the hand and finally forced his eyes open. It wasn't easy- they felt like they had been glued shut with grit and ick.

"Hey..." The first thing he saw was Diana, leaning over him. Her brows were furrowed but she was smiling, which Martin hazarded to assume was a good thing. Billy was hovering over her shoulder, looking much more freaked out than Martin thought the situation really called for...whatever the situation happened to be.

"What happened?" He asked, pushing himself into a sitting position. The room around him blurred and ran together in a puddle of color and he had to close his eyes for a moment as the movement caused his stomach to flip. He had been looking at the wall carvings...Diana and Billy had been ahead of him...but then what? Images tickled the corners of his memory, but they were already fading, dreamlike phantoms with no form that he could grasp. He felt Diana touch his shoulder gently. 

"I was about to ask you the same question." For once her tone wasn't accusatory, just a quiet mix of worry, confusion and relief. "I turned around to say something to you and all of a sudden you weren't there anymore. We went back to look for you, in case you had gotten left behind or hurt or something, but you had just vanished."

"You didn't pass us or we would have noticed." Billy cut in, peering anxiously up at Martin's face. "The tunnel was a straight line from the entrance to here."

"The tunnels hardly stay the same each time." A new voice, deep and obviously male, added. Martin finally took stock of where he was- the room he was laying in was small and mostly empty, made, as the entire temple had been, of seamless black stone, but the walls here were smooth and non-descript. The ceiling was high enough that Martin couldn't see it, even in the combined glow of their flashlights and the small oil lamp sitting on the floor a few feet away. On the wall across from him was a darker square of black that he assumed to be a doorway, and on the adjacent wall there was an elaborately carved and painted alter, the only thing he had seen so far that had not been made from the same black as stone everything else, but from a dark wood he could not identify. It looked like it had just been carved, completely untouched by time. There was a couple standing next to the altar. It took a second, but Martin's rebooting brain recognized them from their pictures- the missing archeologists.

"What do you mean?" Diana asked. She took Martin's arm when he made a wobbly attempt at standing and let him lean on her for support when his legs protested. 

"Well," The female archeologist- Kathrine something-or-the-other- didn't look up from the sketch pad she was scrawling on "when we first came down here, the tunnel was a straight path, but every time we've tried to leave since then we've just ended up in a different room. The tunnel never turns or twists, it just goes somewhere different."

"That's impossible." Diana sniffed. 

“No offense Dia...” Martin mumbled, not particularly caring if she took offense or not so long as the contents of his stomach remained where they were “...but we kind of deal in the impossible.” He tried to stand on his own; His head felt light and tingly, as if he had just had a double espresso. His fingers and toes tingled too, and he felt....God, he could run a mile, he thought, if only he could get his legs to cooperate. “So...what, we just keep walking until we get to the exit, right?”

“Highly unlikely.” Kathrine...no, wait, maybe it was Katie.... scoffed. “We have been up and down that tunnel for days, and not a glimpse of sunlight. I’m not sure how this place works, but it’s not letting us go.” 

Martin frowned. He wanted to argue. He was absolutely certain that if they just headed for the exit, the exit they would find. But he hadn’t been aimlessly wandering the tunnel for days, trying to find a way out as they had. Technically, they were the authority on how trapped they were or were not. Still...

“Well, it’s not like we’re going to get anywhere just standing around, right? Might as well go somewhere.” He shuffled for the door, ignoring his sister’s protests. With every step he took his legs gained strength until he could walk without feeling like they were going to buckle underneath him. It was a relief. He didn’t want to have to lean on his sister the entire time. How humiliating would that have been?

He hesitated just outside of the door. The darkness seemed different. Not nearly as heavy or ominous as it had before...before....he frowned, something dancing right on the edges of his memory....

A warm hand at his back startled him out of his thoughts. Diana offered him her flashlight and a small smile. What had he been thinking again? Right. Exit. He took the flashlight and never spared the darkness around him a second thought.


End file.
